10/25/2016

What is Emotional Hygiene, Why is it Important and How Can You Attain It?

What is EMOTIONAL HYGIENE?

Put simply, it's a set of strategies we put in place to ensure we can reach and maintain emotional health. Guy Winch, author of "Emotional First Aid" who holds a PhD in Psychology, is a frequent speaker on TED talks and writes for the Huff Post asks

"Why is it that our physical health is so much more important than our emotional health?"

Highlighting the often under appreciated dichotomy maintain between our physical and emotional health he says:

"When someone is depressed, they are told to just shake it off. Can you imagine saying that to a person with a broken leg? Oh, just walk it off"

Some of the emotional states that cause us the greatest grief are:

Loneliness - "It creates a deep psychological wound that scrambles our thinking and makes us afraid to reach out for fear of rejection. I causes you to feel emotionally disconnected from those around you" says Dr. Winch.

"It increases the likelihood of an early death by 14%. It causes high blood pressure, high cholesterol and impairs the functioning of your immune system. It even has been concluded poses a risk equal to cigarette smoking.That is why we must practice Emotional Health".

Whether we see or care to make a connection between our minds and bodies, one does exist. And when we choose to ignore or neglect the integrity of our emotions, we cause ourselves great and lasting harm.

Another catalyst in the breakdown of our emotional health is Failure

Dr Winch recalls an experiment where in 3 children were presented with identical toys. If the correct button was pressed, a cute little doggy would pop out. The wrong button would have no effect. The first girl tried to open the box by pressing the wrong button and soon became frustrated. The second boy, seeing this, didn’t even try and began to cry. The 3rd girl pressed the right button and squealed with glee when the puppy appeared.

He concludes that, "each toddler was perfectly capable of opening the box by pressing the right button, but the only thing that prevented them was that their mind tricked them into believing that they could not".

"And adults get tricked this way all the time as well. If your mind tells you that you are incapable of something and you believe it, you’ll feel hopeless and stop trying too soon or not try at all. That will reinforce your belief that you cannot succeed".That is why so many function below their actual potential, because somewhere along the way, they became convinced they could not succeed. “But you must fight feelings of hopelessness and gain control over the situation”.

Stop Emotional Bleeding - “Our brain and our feelings are not the trustworthy friends we thought they were. They’re more like a really moody friend, who can be totally supportive one minute and really unpleasant the next.” Says Dr. Winch.

We tend to reinforce negative feelings more often the positive ones and with greater passion through the process of Rumination. You just cannot stop replaying a scene of embarrassment, conflict or disappointment over and over in your head.

“This can easily become a habit and it is a very costly one. By spending so much time focused on upsetting and negative thoughts, you are actually putting yourself at significant risk for developing clinical depression, alcoholism, eating disorders and even cardiovascular disease”.

I can say this nefarious, negative thought pattern has been a feature of my emotional landscape in the past. Once a moment of embarrassment, failure, disappointment or fear entered my mind, I could not seem to evict it. It would carry me down into a dark, dank rabbit hole and I felt unable to regain control.

Then one day, the thought occurred to me to capture my emotional state on a canvas. I bought some paints and just began using bright colors in various random shapes and strokes to illustrate the chaos raging inside myself. Soon, I found the time whizzing by effortlessly and I became aware of the fact that I no longer felt imprisoned by my thoughts. I found a healthy therapy that pulled me out of my downward vortex

And Dr Winch underscores that this can be a very effective strategy to combat negative thinking: "Studies tell us that as little as a two minute distraction has the power to break a rumination in that moment". Each time you find yourself spiraling down into a counterproductive pattern, have a method for distraction waiting, ready to be engaged in. It could be listening to comedy, working on a creative project, going for a swim or reading a book. "By taking action when you’re lonely, be changing your responses to failure, by protecting your self esteem, by battling negative thinking, you won’t just heal your psychological wounds, you will build emotional resilience”.

"A hundred years ago, people began practicing personal hygiene and life expectancies rose dramatically within a decade. By working to improve our emotional hygiene, we can improve the quality of our lives".

The most common form of emotional disturbance is depression. It tends to make us withdraw from those people and things we once enjoyed. Furthermore, unlike a physical symptom, that often have outward signs, depression leaves no physiological scars or handicaps. When the depressed person does encounter others in the course of work or social situations, his downward gaze, poor posture and sad facial expression reveals that something is wrong, but the lack of a "real illness or injury" that might otherwise gain sympathy, only distresses others, adding guilt to the weight of his emotional despair.

This is not to say that gaining and maintaining emotional health is easy. It's not. But to ignore it or presume that it's less important than caring for our body is to assign ourselves to an existence devoid of feelings like accomplishment, love, understanding and happiness. It is not easy, but absolutely attainable and necessary. Here are some resources that will build hope and lead toward better self discovery and understanding.

Having this "self knowledge is essential for avoiding or controlling negative thinking patterns.

“Can you imagine a world where there was less loneliness, less depression, where people knew how to overcome failure? If they felt better about themselves and more empowered?” That is the kind of world Guy Winch says he wants to live in and so do I.

Random Samples to Get You Started

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